How LEADER helps implement Catalonia’s Rural Agenda
LEADER plays a key role in translating Catalonia’s Rural Agenda from strategy into reality, with Local Action Groups (LAGs) helping to tackle challenges such as depopulation, housing shortages and youth employment across the region’s rural areas.
Image by IoanaCatalinaE from Getty Images
Rural areas represent around 75% of Catalonia’s territory but are home to just 10% of the population. As a result, like many other parts of rural Europe, the region faces issues such as demographic decline and limited access to services.
The Rural Agenda of Catalonia (Spain) aims to ensure territorial equity and improve quality of life in the region’s rural areas. This strategic policy framework, the result of a collective participatory process, seeks to reverse population decline, bridge the urban-rural divide and empower rural communities.
It is designed to address structural inequalities in seven key areas – relating to people, well-being and demographic challenge; the environment; connectivity; the agri-food system; forestry; innovation; and governance – through almost 900 actions. The agenda has a bottom-up approach and is based on the participation of citizens and other rural stakeholders.
Beyond being a strategic document, the agenda has established an innovative governance structure that enables stakeholder participation, coordination across regional ministries, and oversight by the Catalan Parliament, helping to ensure policy coherence, effective implementation and long-term political commitment.
The role of LEADER
The Association of Rural and Maritime Initiatives of Catalonia (ARCA) acts as the regional LEADER network and has 16 members – 11 LAGs and five Fisheries LAGs. ARCA played a key role in the Rural Agenda of Catalonia’s development, notably by leading coordination of the participatory process that shaped its content.
Today, it remains a key actor in the governance structures overseeing implementation of the agenda's actions, working closely with relevant regional ministries and the Catalan Parliament to coordinate actions and assess achievements.
The network also supports implementation of the agenda by facilitating collaboration between actors. At local level, the 11 LAGs work closely with municipalities, businesses and civil society to implement projects that contribute to the agenda’s objectives.
LEADER Cooperation projects are particularly important. Catalonia boasts 10 such projects and, unusually, the cooperation is among LAGs in the region, rather than with groups in other countries or regions of Spain.
Projects include ODISSEU, which seeks to encourage and facilitate the return of young people to rural areas through employment opportunities. Another project, CAL RURAL, focuses on rehabilitating unused rural housing and mobilising vacant properties to increase access to housing in rural areas, addressing an acute challenge in rural Catalonia.
Find out more in this video and presentation and discover the Catalan regional government’s commitment to the Rural Pact.
Explore the latest Rural Pact resources on the topic of LEADER/CLLD.